Earl Tupper and Brownie Wise
Although he was born in New Hampshire, Earl Tupper grew up in Massachusetts where his father failed to make much of a living on their farm. Earl was an indifferent student, though he later took several correspondence courses in various disciplines after completing high school. Like his father, Earl was a tinkerer, inventing various devices and innovations, including a better method (in his mind) of removing an appendix despite his lack of training in anatomy or medicine. Eventually he established his own tree surgery and landscaping company, which went bankrupt during the Great Depression. He then found work with the Viscaloid division of DuPont in Leominster, MA.
After working with DuPont Earl bought some used plastic molding machines and began manufacturing soap dishes and cigarette cases, creating the Tupper Plastics Company. After World War Two and with the assistance of DuPont, which provided him with polyethylene, he developed molded bowls with airtight lids, which he called Tupperware. Earl gave away the bowls with cigarettes to generate demand and word of mouth advertising, and tried selling them in stores with marginal success. Then he learned of the success being achieved by Brownie Wise, a single mother who purchased Tupperware at wholesale and sold it at home parties. Earl hired her as his vice-president and decided to sell all of his products exclusively through home parties.
Earl was a recluse in many ways, Brownie was exuberant, and the two companies which Earl had created – Tupperware and Tupperware Home Parties reflected their differences in personality. Sales of the product skyrocketed in the growing suburbs which the GI Bill helped created during the 1950s. Earl left Brownie alone to run Tupperware Home Parties while he concentrated on production, personally designing each new product. By the end of the 1950s Earl was more than a little jealous of Brownie’s growing fame, and was under pressure from knowledge that as sole owner of the company his fortune would be heavily taxed should he attempt to leave it to his children.
In 1958 Earl fired Brownie, without giving a reason, and shortly afterwards he sold Tupperware to Rexall. Tupperware Home Parties became a subsidiary of Avon. Before Earl sold Tupperware Home Parties he saw to it that all references to Brownie Wise in the company’s manuals, sales literature, and advertising was excised, and she became persona non grata within the company. Wise was given one year’s salary as a severance when she was forced out of the company. She tried to use it to form a cosmetics company for which the product would be sold through home parties, calling the company Cinderella. She lacked the funds to launch the company.
After firing Brownie and subsequently selling his companies Earl divorced his wife of many years. He relocated to Costa Rica, and renounced his American citizenship to avoid taxes on his estate. Most of the many patents he held through his Tupperware products expired during the 1980s, and the company now has competition which hadn’t existed during its heyday. Tupperware is today marketed around the world, mostly through party plans. Attempts to sell Tupperware through retail outlets have proven to be unsuccessful, hurting the direct sales achieved through Tupperware Parties.